Electronic devices that transmit and receive different types of signals, such as telecommunication systems, may include a plurality of signal processing circuits. When one signal processing circuit using a first sampling frequency transmits a digital signal to the other signal processing circuit using a second sampling frequency, sample-rate conversion is desirable to change the sampling rate of the digital signal from the first sampling frequency to the second sampling frequency.
A conventional approach to sample rate conversion includes converting a digital signal to an analog signal, and then re-sampling the analog signal at a new sampling rate to obtain a new digital signal. However, this approach usually uses a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and thus often results in undesirable signal distortion and expensive manufacturing cost.
Another conventional approach to sample rate conversion includes upsampling a digital signal sampled at a first sampling frequency to an intermediate conversion frequency that corresponds to a least common multiple of the first sampling frequency and a second sampling frequency, and then downsampling the upsampled digital signal to the second sampling frequency. However, when a ratio of the first and second sampling frequencies is not a whole number, the intermediate conversion frequency is high, and as a result the sample-rate conversion is computationally inefficient.